Feature Request: Noisy Y/C Cable (sharp) filter.

triman84 · Post by **triman84** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 9:06 am

I've noticed that several emulators seem to use many of the same video filters (2xsai engine for example). There is a filter I noticed while using an MSX emulator, blueMSX, called Noisy Y/C Cable (sharp). This filter creates a sort of static effect over the game itself. I really like this effect and was hoping it could be implimented into ZSNES. I love the emulator, keep up the great work (btw, I never have bug problems, I almost feel neglected)

blueMSX's feature page, an image of this is near the bottom http://www.bluemsx.com/features.html

Dmog · Post by **Dmog** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 2:56 pm

triman84 wrote:I've noticed that several emulators seem to use many of the same video filters (2xsai engine for example). There is a filter I noticed while using an MSX emulator, blueMSX, called Noisy Y/C Cable (sharp). This filter creates a sort of static effect over the game itself. I really like this effect and was hoping it could be implimented into ZSNES. I love the emulator, keep up the great work (btw, I never have bug problems, I almost feel neglected) blueMSX's feature page, an image of this is near the bottom http://www.bluemsx.com/features.html

Won't happen. Currently, the Zsnes people don't really care to implement these type of features. What has been accepted so far are more of cosmetic changes/small annoyance fixs with Zsnes itself. Nothing really major (like a new filter for example) Besides, features requests that have not a large pool of supporters are generally shot down quite rapidly.

"Don't ask for inane features such as porting ZSNES to MacOS or adding Super GameBoy emulation, etc." The 'etc' should be turned into "don't ask for things that wouldn't be used by a vast majority of Zsnes users". Seriously, I'm not being sarcastic here.That's just how it is really. I think this should be made into a sticky.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 3:33 pm

I think you'll find that if you enable interpolation + 25% scanlines on Zsnes you'll get a really nice TV-simulation too.

Though... after looking at the page, that does look good. Hey, you could try implementing it yourself.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 6:34 pm

Depending on how the filter is coded and its what license it's under, it could be added to zsnes, but it'd require to meddle with the gui (add a new box, and make it exclusive).

@Dmog: were you around when MaxSt registered and posted something similar ? hq*x was in zsnes under a month after that.

Clements · Post by **Clements** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 6:49 pm

Although MaxSt implemented much of the hq filters himself to my knowledge, so adding it was not much of a pain for the developers of the time.

Plus that filter looks utterly crap IMO. TV-Out is the only way to faithfully reproduce the garbage that TVs distort the true Snes image with.

Post by **Nach** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:42 pm

Well, I didn't do my job at the time, and zinx had a field day getting HQ2x into the Linux version...

MaxSt · Post by **MaxSt** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 8:00 pm

Does HQ2X actually work in Linux? Seems unlikely to me.
I see hq2x_16b() gets invoked from Windows-only code, and that's the only place.

MaxSt.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 8:29 pm

MaxSt wrote:Does HQ2X actually work in Linux? Seems unlikely to me.
I see hq2x_16b() gets invoked from Windows-only code, and that's the only place.

MaxSt.

I assure you hq2x works in linux.

Esturk · Post by **Esturk** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:33 pm

I can't stand the blurriness. Call me weird, but I like Zsnes just the way it is without any filters or interpolation.

Joe Camacho · Post by **Joe Camacho** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:34 pm

Looks nice, but it's up to the developers to add it or not, although I'm quite happy with the filters we have now.

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Nov 30, 2004 11:45 pm

Slightly offtopic remark; if composite really looks like this on TVs, then I find myself lucky for living in a scart-using continent. I mean, you can't see a single fucking pixel... it's just a blurry mess.

And some people played SNES games like this ?! Oh my, my, my.

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Wed Dec 01, 2004 12:09 am

The filter looks okay, but it's not my cup of tea.

triman84 · Post by **triman84** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 1:06 am

First of all, as far as snes emulation itself goes, zsnes is around 99.9% complete IMO; bug fixes are mostly a thing of the past here. Second, filters are nothing but add-in in the first place, which the emulator has supported for a while, why not another one? Dmog, nice paraphrasing and twisting of the rules, besides, I think alot of people would enjoy this filter if they toyed with it. Download blueMSX and a demo to give it a try, its nothing like scanlines or like playing it on a TV. Personally, I prefer filters, except with Mario, can't stand filters on Mario.

illegal eagle · Post by **illegal eagle** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 8:44 am

triman84 wrote:First of all, as far as snes emulation itself goes, zsnes is around 99.9% complete IMO; bug fixes are mostly a thing of the past here.

Have you seen the Official Bug Topic lately?

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 2:49 pm

illegal eagle wrote:
triman84 wrote:First of all, as far as snes emulation itself goes, zsnes is around 99.9% complete IMO; bug fixes are mostly a thing of the past here.
Have you seen the Official Bug Topic lately?

Beat me to it! Yeah.. ZSNES still has PLENTY of bugs which will take quite some time to fix. Then I'm sure we will find some more.

There was also a discussion on the innacurate timing in ZSNES. If all the current bugs get fixed, one could move on to fixing the timing.
And the list goes on after that.

Just because Super Mario World works well enough for you to think ZSNES is 99.9% bug free means nothing. It's not bug free nor anywhere near it. You're wrong.

illegal eagle · Post by **illegal eagle** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 4:09 pm

Nightcrawler wrote:Just because Super Mario World works well enough for you to think ZSNES is 99.9% bug free means nothing.

Heh...

zsKnight wrote:[in response to Qwertie]
Just ignore invalid addresses. They're everywhere (even mario world!)

When you don't handle this correctly, you get errors. (Remember the "PPU" bug, Nightcrawler?

)

Dmog · Post by **Dmog** » Thu Dec 02, 2004 7:14 pm

triman84 wrote:First of all, as far as snes emulation itself goes, zsnes is around 99.9% complete IMO; bug fixes are mostly a thing of the past here. Second, filters are nothing but add-in in the first place, which the emulator has supported for a while, why not another one? Dmog, nice paraphrasing and twisting of the rules, besides, I think alot of people would enjoy this filter if they toyed with it. Download blueMSX and a demo to give it a try, its nothing like scanlines or like playing it on a TV. Personally, I prefer filters, except with Mario, can't stand filters on Mario.

99.9%? Please...Like Nightcrawler said: Check out the bug topic, or better yet: the zsnes bug tracker. The list there isn't even an exhaustive one.

And the Kiddies shall inherit the earth...

There was also a discussion on the innacurate timing in ZSNES. If all the current bugs get fixed, one could move on to fixing the timing.
And the list goes on after that.

Wouldn't it make more sense to try to fix the timing 'first' (supposing it's something that could be fixed of course) I admit I don't quite get the purpose of the bug list/bug tracker... what's the point exactly? If you're not going to rewrite the whole timing system (again: I'm not the one who knows if that's even possible..) that means you're going to make "hacks" to the timing system..well "hack" is maybe a bad choice of word here (I'm not a native english speaker btw :p) but basically you're going to "build upon" what you allready have. Adding things progressively so that more game works. While that's not a bad thing in itself, that's not addressing the main issue (supposing you care about the main issue in the first place)

triman84 · Post by **triman84** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 2:25 am

I've noticed the bug report is quite large, thanks. However, I haven't had any issues with Zsnes in the past few years. I might also add that alot of these bugs are very minor. Regardless of the bugs, a feature request isn't unreasonable, after all this is a feature request forum is it not? If new features shouldn't be considered, then why ask for suggestions? This new feature would not paralyze the emulator, so are there any REAL problems here?

Clements · Post by **Clements** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 2:50 am

Adding more and more filters is pointless when hardly anyone is going to use it, and the trouble it causes just to add it when more important things are being worked on (like SuperFX/SA-1 chips) that almost everybody would prefer time spent on. It took a lot of work to simply add a blinking cursor in the GUI. ZSNES is fully open source so anyone can add it, as long as they are fluent in assembly.

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 2:39 pm

Dmog wrote: Wouldn't it make more sense to try to fix the timing 'first' (supposing it's something that could be fixed of course) I admit I don't quite get the purpose of the bug list/bug tracker... what's the point exactly? If you're not going to rewrite the whole timing system (again: I'm not the one who knows if that's even possible..) that means you're going to make "hacks" to the timing system..well "hack" is maybe a bad choice of word here (I'm not a native english speaker btw :p) but basically you're going to "build upon" what you allready have. Adding things progressively so that more game works. While that's not a bad thing in itself, that's not addressing the main issue (supposing you care about the main issue in the first place)

It would make sense to work on the timing engine first being that some of those bugs are probably related to the inaccurate timing. However, rewriting the timing engine is going to be a large task and when complete there's going to be lots of games that used to work that now don't! Byuu pointed out some reasons why it may be better to leave ZSNES with it's current engine in the Dev forum.

And of course.. Pagefault can work on whatever he wants first. There's no special order anything has to be done in in the hobby world!

I'm interested to know how many of the current bugs are timing related. Perhaps it's not as grave as we may think.

illegal eagle · Post by **illegal eagle** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 4:07 pm

Just one example:

EWJ2 transfers data to the SPC via HDMA, ie. every scanline some bytes. The timing has to be correct, and HDMA and the CPU-APU communication are among the things that are hard to emulate.

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Fri Dec 03, 2004 6:57 pm

Jesus! What a read that was. I only made it through a few of those pages. Very informative though.

They go more into depth on the HDMA issue with EWJ2 than I expected. And that clearly explains how these timing problems occur and why it's difficult to fix.

ZSNES board

Feature Request: Noisy Y/C Cable (sharp) filter.

Feature Request: Noisy Y/C Cable (sharp) filter.

Re: Feature Request: Noisy Y/C Cable (sharp) filter.